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It seems that the internet would be freest if it was decentralized--in nobody's hands. I think this would certainly be true of things like DNS, although I'm not
by tikhonj 13y ago
It seems that the internet would be freest if it was decentralized--in nobody's hands. I think this would certainly be true of things like DNS, although I'm not sure how to accomplish this.
Of course, in many ways, decentralized systems are rather counter-intuitive. They're possible technically, and the math is often elegant, but very few non-technical people encounter enough systems like this to be comfortable with the idea. Of course, a market is a perfect example of a decentralized system, but most people don't think of a market as a system per se.
So perhaps this argument comes because the author does not realize or intuitively grasp the possibility that nobody need control the internet. And sure, when given the choice of whom to trust, the US is much better than many countries! Certainly better than Russia or China. And these countries have serious sway in the UN. Moreover, his point that the UN is not accountable to anyone is actually very important: while a democratic country like the US[1] is accountable to the people, the UN is only accountable to governments. Even in the US, we don't vote for our UN representative! (Do we?) So it's very indirect.
But what if nobody really controls the internet--what if we manage some decentralized, consensus based system? Or something. (As I said before, I haven't thought of the details, so let's keep it hypothetical.) Well, that's a different ball game. Yet people may not even realize this is an option.
[1]: Yeah, yeah, there's all sorts of pedantic argument to be made here, but I think it's besides the point: the US government is, to some finite extent, accountable to the people in a way that even China's isn't.
- hitchhiker999 13y agoNo, you are absolutely correct. It was designed to be decentralized. Hopefully when we look back in history, from a place where the internet works that way. We'll wonder how it was ever a single government / set of corporations that was 'in charge of it.'
- krapp 13y agoI can't see how the internet can be entirely decentralized, and still operate at the scale that it does. There are laws that must be applicable to the transfer of money and to business done online (at least for any business that wants to operate legally - obviously this excludes the Silk Roads of the world), to say nothing of the physical server, routing and power infrastructure involved. This is not to suggest that the internet must be centralized but I believe that the bigger it gets the more pressure there will be for corporations and governments to assert some kind of order onto it. And I think that for the most part, people want that. Most people want the internet they believe they have, in which they can check their facebook and pay their bills online and sneak their porn in peace.
- saraid216 13y ago> Even in the US, we don't vote for our UN representative! (Do we?) Correct. The UN representative is a diplomatic ambassador. Just like every other diplomatic ambassador. Also, similarly, the SCOTUS appointments. > while a democratic country like the US[1] is accountable to the people Different to the point you're making, but the US is accountable to the people in the same way. In the US, the federal government is appointed through the states: the district you live in determines which Representative seat you vote for, the state you live in determines which Senators you vote for and how much of an impact you make to the POTUS run-off based on the electoral college. In other words, the United States federal government isn't accountable to "the people": distinct parts of it are distinctly accountable to distinct parts of the people. And that's just the legislature plus one public office. The judicial isn't accountable at all, nor is any other part of the the executive. The rest of what you vote on in the ballot is state-level, county-level, and local-level. All of this is to say that the level of indirection you're talking about isn't a black-and-white binary. It's just one more iteration of an already very indirect chain.
- kthulhu7 13y agoAgreed that nobody needs to control the Internet, however the standards organizations are centralized and controllable.